Perfect

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Wednesday, July 31, 2019

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy.  But I say, love your enemies!  Pray for those who persecute you!  In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.  For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.  If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that?  Even corrupt tax collectors do that much.  If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?  Even pagans do that.  But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.  Matthew 5:43-48

We are called to be different.  It is certainly different to act in a loving way to those that hate you and describe themselves as your enemies!  But that is the kind of love we see on the cross, where Jesus prayed, Father, forgive them.

C.S. Lewis wrote:  There is no safe investment.  To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.  The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.[2]

There are plenty of people we have all met that we would rather leave off the guestlist; but that isn't the way it works.  When we find ourselves in that condition we must work at finding ways to love, and even as far as liking!

Chuck Swindoll tells a great story of the man who fell in love with an opera star:

He hardly knew her, since his only view of her was from the third-floor balcony.  But he was convinced he could live happily ever after married to anyone who sang like she did.  He scarcely noticed that she was much older than he.  Nor did he note the limp.  Her mezzo-soprano voice would carry them through anything!  After a whirlwind romance and a hurry-up ceremony they were off for the honeymoon. As she began to prepare for their first night together, his chin dropped to the floor when she plucked-out her glass eye and plopped it into a container on the nightstand.  She pulled off her wig, ripped off her false eyelashes, yanked out her dentures, unstrapped her artificial leg, and smiled at him as she slipped off the glasses that hid her two hearing aids.  He was stunned and horrified.  But he managed to blurt out, Sing, woman; for goodness sake, SING!"[3]

For You Today

We are called to perfection in love.  But we are far from perfect people.  This is not a perfect world, you don’t belong to a perfect church family, we will never see it so until Jesus comes back to clean up the mess.

But, for now....When it comes to the brother or sister in your church that you have a hard time with, sing, Christian, sing! 

When your unbelieving neighbor upsets you, sing, Christian, sing! 

And when the last thing on your mind is reconciling, or denying self, or keeping your vows sacred, or forbearing...sing, Christian, sing!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Pixabay.com        Unless otherwise noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

[2] C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves  Image, Ibid.

[3] Image:  By Srđan Doroški - Serbian National Theatre, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons